History, General

TMU Libraries Omni Search
For optimum use, sign in. This search engine searches for journal articles (many are available electronically), books, e-books, theses and dissertations, and newspaper articles from some recent and a selection of archival newspapers. It indexes digitized content such as out-of-copyright books and journals that are available from sources such as The Internet Archive and The Hathi Trust. Omni facilitates discovery and borrowing of print books from other universities in Ontario excluding the University of Toronto.

Refine your search using the filters on the left.

For more advanced searching across a more targeted set of resources, you may want to try a discipline specific indexing/abstracting database or collection as listed in the next boxes.

• Omni Research Tips and FAQ

  There are useful suggestions on how to use this search tool effectively.

Omni replaces the traditional catalogue that used to search for books, e-books, dvds, and other resources except for journal articles. Now, Omni can be used to look for known books, or when using the default (a keyword) search to find some relevant titles for an assignment. You can use the Browse Search with the drop down option for Library of Congress Subject Heading. This type of search is ideal for finding Books and Ebooks in our collection. It will display a selective index of subject headings most relevant to your search When you find book records, you can use the Subject terms in the record to link to similar items. If you want to find books, e-books and articles at the same time, consider using Omni, Advanced Search and Subject Contains ...

Some useful subject searches using Omni Browse Searching & Library of Congress Subject Heading:

Boycotts
Civil disobedience
Civil rights movements
Democratization
Gay liberation movement United States History
Government, Resistance to
Passive resistance India 
Protest movements
Revolutions
Slave insurrections Haiti
Social justice United States
Women Suffrage Great Britain History
 

[Name of a country or geographic region] -- History -- [may have subdivisions for time period, type of content etc.]

China History Tiananmen Square Incident, 1989
France History Revolution, 1789-1799
France History Revolution, 1789-1799 Influence
Haiti History Revolution, 1791-1804
South Africa History 1909-1961

[Name of country or geographic region] -- Politics and government

China Politics and government 1976-2002
Germany (East) Politics and government
South Africa Politics and government 1948-1961

The Name of a person, or, Name of an organization, or,  Name of a building searched as a subject

Bastille
Parks, Rosa, 1913-2005
United Farm Workers

Name of a topic or event as a subject -- [subdivision for state/country--city] 

Civil rights movements Alabama Montgomery
Grape Strike, Calif., 1965-1970
Stonewall Riots, New York, N.Y., 1969

Keyword / default Omni search for name of a person (may add another keyword)

gandhi salt
rosa parks boycott

Keyword / default Omni search for topic

delano grape
defiance south africa
montgomery bus boycott
pro-democracy
storming bastille
tiananmen

tiananmen [Omni Advanced search, Subject contains ...]
saint-domingue [this was the early name of Haiti]

Encyclopedias and dictionaries

remain useful sources of quick information.  In addition to free sources such as Wikipedia, consider some of our licensed electronic content from publishers such as Oxford University Press, as well as printed items. 

Try using Omni, Advanced Search and Subject contains: [type a topical word or words] and etiher dictionaries, or, encyclopedias

Example Subject contains searches:

• canada biography dictionaries
• cold war encyclopedias
• egypt encyclopedias
• europe history chronology
• political chronologies
• scientists biography dictionaries
• united states history revolution dictionaries

Biographical information

Consider these resources:

• American National Biography (1999, 24 vols.), and, Supplement (2002-) (for people who are deceased)
• Canadian Who's Who (for living persons; print volumes ended with 2012-13; some versions may be available online)
• Dictionary of African Biography (2012, 6 vols.) Available in print at the Toronto Public Library
• Dictionary of Canadian Biography (print for those who died 1930 and earlier; online includes new entries for those who died after 1931 and some are revised entries)
• Dictionary of World Biography. Online 9th ed. (2022)
• Encyclopedia of World Biography (2004) 4 supplementary vols. also available
• International Who's Who (for living persons)
• Native Peoples A to Z: A Reference Guide to Native Peoples of the Western Hemisphere.  2nd ed. (2009, 8 vols.)
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004, 61 vols.) Supplements for recently deceased (2001-2004) & (2005-2008)
• Who's Who (Great Britain, for living persons)
• Who's Who in America (for living persons)
• Current Biography (1941-2015) More recent volumes available at the Toronto Pulbic Library.
• Abridged Biography and Genealogy Master Index (1988)
   

Historical Maps and Atlases

Try Omni Browse Search, and Library of Congress Subject Heading:

• Canada Historical geography Maps
• China Maps
• Europe Historical geography Maps
• United States Historical geography Maps
• World history Maps
• World War, 1939-1945 Maps

The W.H. Pugsley Collection of Early Canadian Maps from McGill University Library

The David Rumsey Map Collection makes accessible historic maps of North and South America

The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library is digitizing many of the 200,000 maps in the collection. Search digital content under the Collections tab.

The Toronto Public Library (TPL) has ongoing subscriptions to many biographical resources as well other dictionaries and encyclopedias that are not available at TMU. Many of the resources are located at the Toronto Reference Library situated just north of Bloor Street on Yonge Street.